Their new multi-billion dollar entry into the hyper-competitive gaming market is called Wii.

Pronounced "we."

Oh.

I’m sure there are ten good reasons to choose this name. I can’t think of one of them.

The thing about picking a name for a product, a building or even a kid is that it’s free. The single most important piece of free and fast marketing you’ll ever do. You wouldn’t name your daughter Elvis and you shouldn’t name a device for male teenagers Wii.

PS there are more than a million google matches for "wii". None of them, as far as I can tell, are about video games.

PPS in talking with Fred today, he pointed out that a lot of people confuse "remarkable" with "different." Wii is a very different name. But it’s not worth talking about, except in a negative way. Hopefully for Nintendo, the games will be worth talking about. The question: does the name of the device make it easier to talk about the games?